Manning Appeal Seeks Reversal of Charges or Reduced Sentence

Imprisoned national security leaker Chelsea Manning is asking a military appeals court to reverse her conviction for sending classified information to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, or reduce her 35-year sentence to 10 years.

Manning's lawyers released the appeal Thursday after a security review. They filed the document Wednesday in the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals at Fort Belvoir, Virginia.

It calls Manning's sentence "grossly unfair and unprecedented." The document says Manning meant to reveal the toll of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that her disclosures harmed no one.

Manning is imprisoned at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The transgender soldier, formerly Bradley Manning, was convicted in 2013 of espionage and other offenses for sending WikiLeaks more than 700,000 digital files including battlefield logs, diplomatic cables and video clips.

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This article was written by David Dishneau from The Associated Press and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.